The evening wind, which had been moderate in strength an ho, had now grown siderably strohe warmth of the rays that had served Overmore all day could no longer reach the earth's surface. Clouds had gathered and darkened from all dires, itg with precipitation. They formed a chilly barrier between the sun and the ground, just as the road cut a barrier through the ndscape of Catsroes.

  On that road, two young people walked, exhausted by ret events.

  An uneasy silence huween them. her could believe what they had just witnessed. Irgos still didn't uand how it had happened so quickly. Usually, the warning horn only sounded when the jelly monsters approached from the north. Then, there was never any real danger, but people were required to stay indoors just in case.

  Maybe these people are worse mohan the ones we've always known.

  Irgos go his left at his sister, who was two years older than him. Her red hair was whipped about in every dire by the howling wind, making it almost unnoticeable that her bright blue eyes were still ringed red from tears.

  Arada hadn't said anything since she'd suggested they tinue down this road. She must still be in shock, as she seemed withdrawn and clearly didn't feel like talking.

  Yet Irgos decided to break the unfortable silence.

  "You okay?"

  Immediately after asking this, he felt a biting guilt.

  As if I don't already know the answer.

  He wasly good at starting easy versations. All his question did was make the moment even more awkward.

  Arada didn't look up a walking, her head slightly bowed. When there was no response, Irgos tried again.

  "Is it..."

  She sighed heavily, choking on a sob. More tears washed over her freckled cheeks, and with great effort, she finally decided to say something.

  "You saw it, didn't you? He slit his throat."

  Irgos's stomach turo stone. He had known that Cura would never survive the invasion, but he'd been so overwhelmed by all the chaos that he hadn't noticed how the Master had ended his life.

  Arada had never been so upset.

  "He did it so, so fast. I wao help, but..." Her voice caught. After a few sobs, she tried again. "I don't uand... What did Dad ever d? He didn't deserve this!"

  Irgos tried to nod sympathetically. He felt his sister's despair, even though he wasn't great at expressiions.

  "Your father didn't do anything wrong," he assured her. "And no, he definitely didn't deserve this."

  Arada's voice broke even more. "What are we supposed to do now? A mad gang of b-baldies destroys your home. Led by a m-mania a suit, targeting Dad." Her breathing quied in short bursts. "And I don't see them leaving us a-alone now."

  Arada couldn't hold it in anymore. She burst into tears, her face flooding with emotion. It was a chilling sight in the brewing storm.

  Irgos couldn't think of anything else to say. He didn't know what had shocked him more: that their hometown had been leveled to the ground or that they were forced to ehe territories of the Old World.

  After Arada had calmed down a bit and it had been silent for a while, she spoke again.

  "I still 't get over what we've escaped from. It's a real miracle that we both got out. But they'll probably e after us, so we o keep moving." She paused. "Let's see if we find a shelter before it all breaks loose and try to spend the night there."

  They exged a look. Her tear-streaked face was sad, but her eyes showed determination. Something Irgos was a bit envious of.

  "Let's hope that shelter appears soon," he said. "Do you know how terrified I am of being overtaken by them in this weather, in the dark?"

  Arada looked away again.

  "Tell me about it."

  * * *

  A little ter, a building appeared alongside the road in the distance. Irgos noticed it first. Even though the clouds had darkened so much it seemed like night, the building was still visible i rays of sun seeping through the cracks in the sky.

  "There," he pointed.

  They had been talking about every little detail that had just happened in Overmore. But no matter how much words they gave the ret events, nothing would ge the horrible oute. The weight of Cura's death sat like a vulture on their shoulders, adding the feeling of stant dao the present.

  The building slowly but surely came closer, until they reached a point where the road split. On the right side, a small branch led to the building. They took this split and soon had a better view.

  It was nothing more than a gray square block with shattered gss in the windows and a doorway without a door. In front of it stood something resembling a gigantic table with reinforced white legs, the legs paired together with a sort of box eg them. Ribbed bck hoses with handles hung from the wall on this structure. Scattered around the building stood strange...

  Well, what oh are these things?

  The objects, made of an unfamiliar material, stood on four separate wheels. They looked like iron but were much shihey had many dark windoeculiar markings on the front and back. Inside each of these were something like seats and benches in two rows, with a panel full of plicated buttons at the front row. Irgos guessed these 'four-wheelers' from the Old World were about one and a half meters high and three meters long. There was also a much rger, more massive type of four-wheeler. They were taller and longer and had regur tainers with many more wheels attached behind them.

  More like a twelve-wheeler.

  Some were covered in rowth and signs of decay. It was obvious that no one had been here in a long time.

  The first raindrops began to fall.

  "Inside," Arada called, pointing to the square building.

  They broke into a jog, running uhe table and into the building. Just in time. In moments, the few drops turned into a deluge. To make matters worse, distant thunder rumbled.

  "What kind of pce have we ended up in?" Arada wondered aloud.

  "Maybe this was how people traveled ba the Old World," Irgos suggested. "Along this smooth stone road with those strange four-wheeled carts." He gestured to the open area outside and the road leading to the building.

  "Well, give me horses any day," she said curtly, taking a deep breath. "It smells awful here, by the way."

  The building was filled with empty, white shelves stretched from left tht. In the back er, there was a slightly lower, wider et. Ft discs, surrounded by a white g, hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered in massive posters full of strange symbols and colorful images.

  She stared at one of the posters. Irgos stood beside her.

  It showed a rge picture, a bination of blue and red-yellow patches. There was also text alongside it.

  "Tortil chips, extra salted," Arada read aloud. "Any idea what that is?"

  "Salted probably means food," Irgos guessed. "But I've never heard of it before."

  "And that o it," she said. "One point sixty?"

  "It's not a whole number," he expined. "It's somewhere between one and two. A bit closer to two thahough."

  Despite the absurdity of the situation, he chuckled inside. He hadn't expected that his iing versations about decimal numbers with Alexander ba Overmore would ever e in handy.

  Irgos's stomach twisted whehought back to his friend.

  Alex... I'm so, so sorry. We were so focused on our own survival that we didn't think about you. He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to cry. It was just too much. We couldn't even have turned around to save you.

  Arada looked at the sign as if it held a great mystery. "But it still doesn't make seo me."

  "Maybe the number shows how good they taste?" Irgos suggested. "The higher, the better?"

  They left the 'chips' alone and walked further through the mysterious little building. The other posters were different but simir, all depig something, described in words and a number.

  "So, these are all examples of the food people ate?" Irgos wondered aloud.

  "Did this food just sit here?" Arada poio the empty shelves that lihe building. "There's no eople could've eaten all that."

  Arada walked to the slightly lower et at the very back. It was light beige, uhe rest, with a er fixed to the wall. Its surface had beeaken by some kind of long-dried, lumpy mold. On it y a few unknown items from the Old World, alongside some metal discs.

  Seeing these, Arada was reminded of something.

  "Irgos?"

  "Hm?"

  "What did Dad give you again?"

  Irgos rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the half-amulet that had been given to him by Cura."Why?"

  Arada poio the discs. "Put it o these."

  He did as she asked.

  "They have something in on," she muttered.

  "What do you mean? These are round, mine's only half."

  "A. Feel it." She picked up one of the discs for parison. It was silver-colored, with a ribbed edge, and bore a faint imprint of an unfamiliar face. She then turned her attention to Cura's amulet. It was a bit rger, also silver, with a ribbed edge, though slightly less shiny thahers. It too had an imprint. It didn't seem to depiything specific; just a few random lines, surrounded by a semicircle and wave-like shapes.

  "Wait, there's something written here," Arada noticed. She brought the amulet close to her eyes and studied it.

  "...protected."

  Irgos stood beside her and looked with her. The word she'd just read was engraved at the top of the amulet. The text followed the curve of the edge, and it seemed like there might be more words before it.

  There was more at the bottom.

  "...forever," they both read together.

  That was all. Arada turhe amulet over, but on the back was another half-face, just like oher discs.

  "Do you remember what Dad told us?" she asked, hiding the painful look that appeared on her face at the thought of her father.

  Irgos hadn't fotten. "That there's someone in 'Aquinox' who has the other half, who help us further. That other half probably also has the rest of the text."

  "He called it an 'amulet'. Whatever that means."

  "Maybe it's like a?" Irgos joked.

  "If I were you, I would it."

  She let out a slow sigh, pg one of the discs ba the table. "Something tells me they're ected."

  Irgos suddenly thought of something else. "Sis, where did you leave the vial?"

  Arada rummaged in the right pocket of her dark purple jacket and pulled out the gss tube with the red-pink liquid, sealed with a wooden cork. Just as they had st seen it.

  "It must not fall into the wrong hands, he'd said."

  Irgos noticed something thid white around the top of the tube, just below the cork. "What's that?"

  Arada touched it a it wasn't firmly attached. She picked it off with her fingernail.

  "Paper?"

  The thin paper was ed around the tube. After a few folds, the paper had grown siderably in size. Arada looked at it with a frown o was unfolded. Irgos came to her side.

  It was a colorful sheet with various patches, some areas marked with text.

  "Look here!" Arada pointed excitedly to the bottht. "'Overmore' is written here. That's our vilge. Well, it was."

  "And this is what Cura mentioned." Irgos poie blob on the left side of the paper beled 'Aquinox'.

  "I get it," Arada said. "It's a kind of representation of the world around us. And the blue must be water, I guess."

  Irgos nodded and read some of the other names on the paper. "Horwitz, Ebrotown, Sunfield. This all must e from the Old World."

  Arada brought the paper closer to her face. "I uand. This is the road we've been walking on." She poio a gray line moving away from Overmore. "So, we must be somewhere around... here."

  Irgos took the paper so he could look as well. "If that was an hour's walk, and if the distances align as shown, the Old World is truly vast. How will we ever get to Aquinox?"

  By now, it had grown signifitly darker aer outside. Large raindrops spttered the road around the building. Lightning fshed in the distahey were stuck here for now.

  "I'm too tired to think about that now," she said with a loud yawn, handing the paper to her brother. "If you keep this and the amulet, I'll hold onto the bottle. We'd best rest now. I doubt those creeps will track us in this weather. Besides, I 't take aep." She meant it literally, dropping down with her knees behind the beige et. She took off her jacket, rolled it up, and pced the purple bundle under her head as a pillow. "No one will be able to see us from outside this way," she said, turning onto her side.

  Irgos agreed. Behind her 'shelter,' there was enough space for two people to lie down, so he y o her on the floor. He didn't have a jacket to take off. His dark blue t-shirt was all he'd worn on this warm day, and he wasn't keen on being seen shirtless. So, he rested his head directly on the floor.

  I'll survive for one night, he thought.

  But falling asleep was impossible. While Arada drifted off within five minutes, Irgos tio mull over the day.

  What es ?

  Why is that horrible 'Master' after us?

  What kind of pce was the Old World?

  That st questio him occupied the most. Other than the jelly mohat hauhe vilge, Cura had refused to tell them what y beyond Overmore's forests.

  And from today, we'll finally find out.

  It was odd, though, that no one else was around. It didly make the evening any more f. As a loud cp of thunder sounded, Irgos turned over yet again.

  Are there even any people left in the Old World?